Elemental Basics
by Kesshou Uryou
Summary: Put the pieces together... and see what mangled picture you create. The only way to know the future is to know the past. [Side fic to Elemental Aeon, should read that first]


_Elemental Basics is a diverging part of its main story, Elemental Aeon. It contains missing parts of the characters' pasts and missing scenes from the general storyline. Each chapter focuses on a different character or group of characters. And as always, I do not own. _

_Please enjoy._

**Elemental Basics**

Kesshou Uryou**  
**

Meilin-

_Black_

**SPOILERS for Chapter X of Elemental Aeon.**

It was a day of daily routine. It started with awakening herself fairly early in the morning and dressing herself in rich silk and elaborate designs. She shuffled to the long mirror at the far corner of her small room and gave a quick, childish, and quirky smile as she squirmed at bit and looked at her small figure from every direction.

Satisfied, she dropped her head, smile falling as she sighed and flailed her arms in silent protest and looking up with a neutral face. There was her reflection. She had perfected that.

Quiet footsteps (she didn't want to wake anyone) were all that she made as she reached her small dresser and picked up her comb, few broken teeth and all. She examined it as she always did with a tired expression, bored and unimpressed by the object. She went back to her reflection, the comb already pushing through her long tresses.

Over and over one small area until it was knot free and perfect by anyone's standards. Then she moved onto the next patch. It was tiring; it was boring. But she kept at it.

She paused halfway, as she almost always did in the process, and fingered a random lock and brushed it with the pads of her fingertips, the comb falling to the floor with a small _plunk_ of a noise. She stared at it only for a moment before she came back to giving her attention to her strands of hair.

Black. They were black. Dark as midnight, resembling the color of the purest raven's coat. It was such a naturally beautiful color, one that anyone could appreciate. She loved that color. She loved her hair. She loved the color black

She could count the compliments anyone in this world had given her in her lifetime on one hand, so few had there been. But her distant father and her nonchalantly unconcerned mother had both found some interest in this feature of hers. It made her proud. Maybe her pride had originated completely from that one single positive comment. It made one wonder if she would have done better then to never have heard a word of goodness on her behalf. But such a young girl ate it right up, so thrilled and enthralled that there was something, anything, about her that was worthy of praise.

She treasured those moments, and that was why she always took extra special care in taming her hair.

It didn't matter to her that her parents never doted on her, hardly glanced upon her. If she could be what they wanted her to be, she hoped with childish fervor that she'd get more of the attention that any child rightly needed and desired.

And it made no difference that she did all this when her parents hardly acknowledged her. She had grown up in the Li household, and parent-child interactions here were also of the minimal and never of the publicized variety. She hardly knew what she was missing.

Still, she knew what it was like to not be good enough. She could perfect the reflection, she was good at that. But when it came to being what she was wanted to be, she failed miserably.

They wanted Elementalists. She was worse than incompetent; she had no god-given ability over the elements. Her parents had wanted a son, first and foremost, and she had been a daughter. Those were principles she understood. She understood very well.

So she slowed and patted down and tidied up her hair each morning and made sure it shone. She wanted to stand out, even just a little. When she had blinked blankly enough times at her mirror image, she scoped up the fallen comb and went back to her task.

And at the end, she began the customary process up sitting two plump buns on top of her head. She thought it made her stand out, a distinct style. With her hair securely tied up, she dropped her hands to her sides and did an experimental twirl.

Dress was fine. The smile was intact. Her hair was all arranged. Yes, her perfect black hair that had the same gleam it had every morning. In her usual hairstyle, she looked young and impulsive and childish and a bit naïve, but it would be years before she let it down. This was her way of showing it off. No one missed her even if only for how she fixed her hair.

**But her smile turned a little depressingly wistful**, her hands fisting into the material of the flowing skirt. There was not even a mother around to impress anymore, however. Certainly there was her father, but he hardly had ever said a word to her, even more off put by her gender than her mother had been. At least her mother had it in her to talk to her everyday and help make her look presentable and give a few scalding pointers.

Meilin didn't mind. It was all the attention she got, the only motherly advice she had been given. It was special in its own way. And she really got impression that her mother cared in her own way, not being a gentle person by nature in the first place.

But now her mother, being an Elementalist herself, was away. In fact, she hadn't been around too long. She had been here for a year or two when Meilin could really remember, but she had been recovering from some form of illness at one point and the other she was wholeheartedly dedicated to perfecting her own elemental domain: air.

Meilin had spent much of their time together watching immersed in how easily she manipulated that element. She had been very jealous of Elementalists even back then, but she appreciated and respected them earnestly and obviously for what they were capable of.

And her mother was certainly was one of the more talented ones at succumbing the gentle breeze that blew past in her watching the practice. She was young mother as most women were especially with currently expanding death tolls from the chaos that had started when the elements had been granted a mind of their own.

Still, her mother was getting on in years for what she was making the final preparations for. And called back she was, just as everyone knew she would be. Meilin just hadn't wanted to accept it. She found herself even missing the scolding along with the sometimes awkward silence which she felt could never lose to the loneliness she felt nowadays.

Setting her degenerate comb down where had picked it from, she made way with the rest of the usual morning routine. She moved silently to the kitchen where she scavenged some fruit and chomped down in a corner away from the bustling cooks. Eventually she'd be called on to deliver a few trays out to the rest of her relatives living in the rather large complex termed her house.

But for now, chomping down in the opposite of delicacy (unlike she had been dictated to do so), she had her own little errand to attend to. She threw the apple core in with a single shoot, scampering off with an excited smile amongst a few unappreciative words and shakes of fists from the cooks.

Meilin arrived quickly enough, knowing exactly how to get there as quick as possible. She straightened her attire now, having not cared what the maids and the like cared for her back there but now was awaiting the exchange with someone outside the family. She was to look her best.

But time was wearing thin today, however, and she took to sitting on the front enclosure of the estate on a low lying platform of sturdy and polished wood. And finally, when she thought all hope for today to be gone just like the past dozen, she saw a glimmer of hope.

Meilin liked to think that it hadn't been so much of her begging but more of her mother's willingness and consideration that kept her writing back to her. And this morning was one where her highly anticipated letters arrived.

Meilin wasn't completely literate yet, but she knew enough words to make out the meaning, and her mother always wrote in simplicity terms probably for her daughter's sake. Still, Meilin usually, for no particular reason, felt that her mother was taking such pains to describe everything around her which was completely unlike her. She should be saying that she was excelling and all was fine. But instead Meilin would be haunted as she tried to fall asleep by a near picture perfect representation of her mother's room or a nearby town or lake.

But Meilin hardly minded so long as her mother wrote so she herself didn't feel as embarrassed when she wrote nearly every day in childish scrawl and idiotic anecdotes.

The mere sight of the figure approaching today, albeit late to the point she could get in trouble, was all she needed to smile her first, and likely the last, genuine smile of the day.

He walked a little closer, and he came about with the regular stack of sealed envelopes and a couple rolled and folded parchments. By now he knew she wasn't there to collect all the mail; she wasn't allowed to do so. Still, he recognized that she was eager for everything that was rightfully hers, namely her mother's accounts. Actually they were addressed as was only proper to her father, but Meilin never had the heart to give it to him. Instead she tucked them away under her bed in an attempt to remain secretive.

The man had made no outward changes in his behavior since her absence had commenced, and he seemed none the worse from not having heard of her. Her parent's marriage had been arranged, and they weren't particularly fond of each other from what Meilin could tell. They just partook in each other's company as was expected when they were at the same place at the same time.

But today, however, the man that usually was her god-sent angel, looked like he was the bearer of bad news. Her smile slipped as easily as it had come.

"I'm sorry I'm late, Little Miss, but today it was actually your letter that held me up." He walked right past her to where the drop off of mail was supposed to be delivered. She left the one-sided conversation with nothing but a small, distinct letter to show proof of its existence.

She only noticed with a strange, sickening feeling that this was different. Not just the conversation, but the envelope too. It was addressed as such to describe the Family and Friends of her mother. Rightfully this one she could open up first (although with a reprimand to let adults do this sort of thing), but she almost didn't want to. This didn't seem to look like something her mother had written.

The worst part, the utterly worst part was that it was coated in black. It almost looked like evil had crept up and snuck into the very most holy thing to her. And it was horrible, truly terrible that it matched her beautiful, flawless hair. This was criminal. This should be a sin. But it wasn't.

And it was with hungry desperate fingers that she opened that letter and sealed her fate. Because that dark, pure dark, night sky black resembling envelope housed a notice of impersonalized and permanent death.

Meilin did not return inside for hours. She wandered and ripped lengths in her dress, and somewhere along the line she had dropped the letter and let it flown away. She couldn't stop her tears, couldn't think straight no longer.

The threat of being yelled at couldn't weigh her down as she aimlessly walked on, despair making rivers of salt water down her smooth and pale cheeks. Never more had she looked a wreck.

Never more had she hated the color black.

Death, evil, her hair. They were all black. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair at all. Her pride, it was ruined. Her mother, she was dead. She hated everything; she hated everyone so very much that she couldn't wrap her words around the indescribable hatred. Her tears did the talking while her cheeks flashed an indignant red.

She _hated_ the color black.


End file.
